[Buscador]

When I was EQP, I handed out the flyers with the disclaimer that it was inappropriate for the church to promote a private business in church, and that if anyone wanted me to hand out advertisements and flyers for their business in church, I would not do it, except for Lagoon Day.

[Buscador]

Bill,

Thanks for the link. I will get to it after I finish the Yale course. I have some reservations about using an Evangelical source, but I will give it a shot.

[Buscador]

Quote:

jmb275 wrote:Try inviting him to get involved in the discussion at faceseast.org.

Asha wrote: I don’t think this is going to happen, since he already is annoyed at how much I am on the computer myself. Plus he is mistrustful of anything online about the church that isn’t at lds.org.

Asha, in my marriage I have found that Mrs. Buscador will only deal with a problem when she is ready. If I try to push the issue it only results in contention, and nobody likes that. Over the past four years or so since I have found it necessary to learn about and eventually come to a sort of peace with the challenging aspects of church history and doctrine, my DW has watched me with concern, caution, care and frustration as I read, wrote and discussed my way through. I only shared with her when she said it was OK. When she said enough, I stopped. She is not ready to explore on her own yet, but I think she eventually will.

Your Husband is playing it safe. That’s fine. It is comfortable to be safe. Someday he may peek out of the TBM bubble to see what the scenery looks like. He may want to see what you have seen if you stop pushing him out of the bubble.

[Buscador]

Hawk, I appreciate the clarification, and I agree with you that church leaders in general do not deliberately deceive, but the institutionalized, media savvy, sales approach to winning converts does not give all the information that would prevent a TBM from becoming disaffected upon encountering the troubling aspects of LDS history. The evidence of deception does not come from the intent of the deceiver, but in the betrayal of the deceived. On a personal level, church leaders, I do not believe, should be harshly judged for “selling what they themselves have bought,” but that does not mean they are not as members of a large institution liable for that deception. When declaring that something is true, such as the Pearl of Great Price (including its provenance), the idea that JS translated the BOM from gold plates by the power of God, those leaders are responsible to do research, no matter if it does not help them become a better Christian (BTW, I think research, carefully performed with discipline can make one a better person), to make sure the details bear out their claims. Relying on the spiritual testimony alone is perilous.

On another point, I am not certain that historical conundrums constitute gospel ‘meat.’ I think they are just history. When I think of meat, I usually think of difficult doctrines like ‘where does god come from?’ or ‘how does one entity’s suffering benefit me?’ I concede that difficult, meaty doctrines like polygamy and polyandry cannot be separated from the historical difficulties associated with them. It is one of the fuzzy gray areas I like to embrace.

Thanks for the link to the Jensen interview.

[Buscador]

Quote:

hawkgrrrl wrote:I don’t believe the church deliberately deceives anyone. They are selling what they themselves buy.

I’d like to jump in here on this point.

When a salesman takes a job, he gets trained in how to sell the company’s product. He tries out the product himself. He likes the product. He can believe in it, and he can sell it in good conscience. He adopts the company selling points as his own and goes about selling.

After several years with the company, the salesman finds out that the company left out some important information about the product that would make it difficult to sell if the customer knew about these things.

What should the salesman do? Should he leave the company? Should he go back to all his customers and give them the information he has just discovered? Should he continue to sell the product including the difficult information? This could hurt sales.

Of course this is a very transparent analogy, but if we are to accept Hawk’s conclusion that the church does not deliberately deceive anyone because they are themselves a customer, you have to ignore the systematic, deliberate pattern of withholding information from church members, missionaries, proselytes, and everyone else.

Is withholding information deceptive. I definitely think so. Maybe the missionaries are not deliberately deceiving, but the institutionalized, accepted missionary approach withholds information, and is therefore deceptive.

Now should the church give the whole story?

I don’t know. Perhaps it is necessary to withhold the difficult information at first so that the church can continue to exist, but information is so easy to get nowadays that I believe the church will have to adjust in order to continue to exist.

[Buscador]

Thanks Ray. The ‘muddle in the middle’ or the warm fuzzy grey area, it’s all the same to me.

It has taken me a while to enjoy uncertainty. I hope LaLa can appreciate it with us.

[Buscador]

Your post resonated with me. Especially the parts about telling your husband of your discovery of the really difficult historical and doctrinal issues.

With my DW I have found that I must carefully pick words and ideas to talk about. If the collection of troubling thoughts come out too fast, Mrs. Buscador can’t handle it and asks or tells me to stop. So I do. I have accepted that all the issues cannot be dealt with at once, so I don’t try. It is too overwhelming.

The good news is that having this information really frees up the believer (or almost believer, or formal, or partial believer) into a liberated approach to Mormonism and doctrinal/historical exploration. I am no longer worried about what I may find out. I am more patient with the grey. In fact, I like the fuzziness of my evolving understanding of truth.

[Buscador]

When I first looked at this topic a couple of days ago I thought I may want to comment on it. I have been thinking about the idea of the church being “the way it should be” for some time. An underlying assumption of this idea is that there is a force deciding how it should be. Is that force God? Or is it some kind of balance the church has ended up in? I have worked on this sentence for quite some time, trying to express what forces the church balances between. But I can’t figure out what the forces are that are balanced. But it seems to me that the church is where it is as a result of some middle ground it has found.

Here is an idea:

Two of the forces that keep the church in balance may be perpetuation of the institution by not appearing too radical versus declaring the innovative and sometimes radical doctrines that permeate the theology of the church.

On another idea, I agree that religion can be manipulative. But it can also work like training wheels on the bike journey of moral development. When we move past being moral for the hope of reward or avoidance of punishment, and do what is best because we have a desire to be the most fully developed human we can be (ride without training wheels) then I think we, as humans, become more open to a real exploration of right and wrong, good and bad, truth and personal improvement.

I really believe the church is the way it is so that it can exist.

[Buscador]

Having started this thread, I am surprised it has turned out to be a discussion on the millennial government under Jesus. Happily, what this has morphed into I find interesting. So here is what I have to say on the matter:

Since Jesus inspired the U.S. Constitution to be the guiding document for a secular government, it may hold some water to say that the government under Jesus would contain a separation of church and state. Especially seeing that the word of God will come forth from Jerusalem, and his laws from the New Jerusalem. In fact, a secular government provides for more genuine religious experiences because those experiences are not tainted by the edicts of the state, not that a state under the rule of Jesus would would harm religion in the first place.

[Buscador]

Hawkgrrrl,

You said it better than I can:

GDTeacher wrote:

I would rather err on the side of personal freedom, even protecting the rights of sinners to sin, so long as their sins don’t violate the tangible rights of others (meaning secular rights – usually that means the right to life, property, freedom, pursuit of happiness) than to try to enforce morality. IMO, legislated morality is no morality at all, and I value freedom above morality.

Thanks

[Buscador]

I was torn as to whether or not I should begin a discussion about this topic. In my family, when I speak of this issue passions rise and sometimes name calling begins. It is difficult to maintain civil discourse on this topic. I think it is related to the sharp divide that exists in the U.S. because of the differences of opinion and existence of dogmatic rhetoric which leads to heated discussion.

Ray, my original question was not one of legality or constitutionality, but of whether the church, pushing a religious agenda in a public policy question, contradicts the church teachings that the constitution, which creates a wholly secular government, was divinely inspired. The individual states having an official church is irrelevant to the question. It is the church’s internal philosophical/doctrinal contradiction that interests me.

I maintain that the church has fallen into lockstep with her evangelical counterparts instead of remembering its unique American position that God inspired the constitution to be written, and recognizing that that inspiration led to a secular government. And the policies and laws that government makes should be based on reason and best practices, not religious influence. The problem with using religion, even my own precious one, to be the basis for public policy violates the spirit of a secular government.

I think the church missteps when it influences laws based on doctrine. I do not think the church violates laws or the constitution when it jumps into the political fray, but it contradicts its own stated beliefs.

I appreciate the irony.

[Buscador]

Thanks for the kind words, all. I am relieved to find a place where there can be some open discussions but not with the negativity.

Over the past few days I have enjoyed listening to the interviews John Dehlin did on Mormon Stories. Why was the website ‘retired’? Was someone at HQ bent out of shape over it?

I am all about looking for truth wherever I can find it, even if it’s unsavory.

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